The poetry collection A World Made of Memories by the Sri
Lankan poetess Nisansala D Bertholemeuze and Bhisma Upreti of Nepal is a
serendipitous meeting of the opposites. Nisansala is one of the new generation
poetesses whose poetry collections though still a few in numbers has been
received favourably by critics and readers of poetry in English both here and
abroad. Bhisma Uperti is an established Nepali poet, translator and an active
promoter of literature as an organizer of international literary festivals and
the secretary to PEN International (Nepal). His work has been translated into
six languages and received numerous awards including SAARC Literature Award.
The collection A World Made of Memories contains 26
topics. Both poets have approached each topic independently. Consequently,
reading the 52 poems gives the reader a unique insight into the personal and
public spheres the two poets inhabit. Taken as a whole, Nisansala’s poems tend
to be shorter and more personal (concentrating mainly on love and loss) while
Bhisma’s are longer and more “universal”. Read together, they offer a
“compassionate, generative connection” between men and women, life and death,
war and peace as well as memory and forgetting.
In this meeting of the
golden coast of Sri Lanka and the snow-capped hills of Nepal, both poets focus
on memory as the centre of their poetic endeavours. The beauty of this
collection of poetry emerges from differences in the approach of the poets to
this much-revisited theme. Overall, Nisansala focuses mainly on the impact of
the memories of broken relationships and, to a lesser extent, the loss of
freedom, life and property brought on by war. Bhisma, on the other hand,
handles a more varied palette. His main concern, however, seems to be exploring
what the meaning of life is. Nisansala tends to react personally to the titles
except when handling war. Bhisma, in contrast, tends to make use of the
collection to explore the public with occasional forays into the private.
In “Despondence,” NDB
equates memory with despondence which is a monster that devours “the bliss of
the present moments” and fills “life with minutes of despondence.” The poetess
is in perpetual fear of memory’s contaminating power over the hard-won moments
of happiness. BU, on the other hand, treats despondence as a brief period of
intense unhappiness between longer periods of joy and hopefulness. There is an
understanding that these short periods shall pass and in their wake positivity
will return: “Hope essential for life/ Indeed sprouts from the very ashes of
hopelessness.”
For Nisansala’s voice in
"June", the word June has many connotations: it is the
name of her beloved; a symbol of meeting and parting, a metaphor for everything
positive – “you are my June” and a symbol of loss. She positions herself on the
western narrative of June: June is the month of fecundity, romance, commitments
and marriage. However, it was in June that her partner had left her. So,
surrounded by images of fecundity, romance, etc. she feels her loss more
powerfully in June. Hence, from then on June takes on a negative connotation
for her. BP looks at June from an easterner’s perspective. June is a month of
dryness between the monsoons. It is an unproductive in-between period of
breathless waiting for fecundity and romance only the rains could bring: “This
is the month of June/……/The wells of creativity inside me have been drying up./
I am waiting for the rains.”
In “Under the Blue
Sky” both NDB and BU see thoughts or memories as birds in flight. In NDB’s
version, the sky links the long-separated “you” with the poetic voice. The tone
is full of sadness. In contrast, BU’s handling of the topic in his poems so far
is positive. He is joyous at seeing the cycle of life in which nature repairs itself
and gives birth to “flowers” of many hues that are “reminiscent of the
vicissitudes of human life” while inspiring poetic souls. In a Keatsean moment,
Bhisma’s poetic voice wishes to rise above the vicissitudes of life on “wings
of desire and dreams” and “clad” himself in the “eternal blue of the sky” where
life originated.
NDM associates the
numerous conflicts she/her poetic persona has seen in “Fire”. She
concluded that though the war had ended, “fire still burns” in the hearts that
lost their “heartbeat”. For her, the end of a war does not mark the end of a
conflict. Fire to her is something demonic and destructive. In contrast, Bhisma
who finds then “[s]tatus quo utterly unacceptable,” associates fire with
something positive that could eradicate the darkness of “demon-like anarchy”
and “foul-smelling violence” of the modern world as a whole. Invoking a
classical myth, he wants Prometheus who breathed life into man to “burn them
all” and use the ashes as fertilizer to “[i]mplant the seeds of a golden dawn”.
In the companion poem on
“Oblivion,” Bhisma’s tone turns dark for the first time. In his poem, BU deals
with the understanding that with time, he had lost his creativity. In the end,
he is forced to rely on newspapers for entertainment. He is forced to rely on
second-hand creativity. Everyone else, including the boy who had carelessly
dropped the newspaper on the grass, is engaged in the “rat race of life”. BU
generates a great deal of pathos when he compares a writer who has lost his creativity
to a “dead old tree barely not on the ground”. NDB revisits the theme of
conflict as a general tragedy that touches the entire society and concludes
that “revenge sought/ Death fulfilled/Generations lost/ Lost for a lost cause”
that results in mass graves, mothers without children and universities being
turned into torture chambers. It is the tears of those who lost loved ones that
“fall/ [i]n Rains”, she says.
In “Imagery” both poets
taking on a Yeatsean stand, question the human need for images. NDB questions
the use of the rose as a symbol of love. According to her, its transient nature
makes the rose unsuitable to be the image of something timeless as love. In her
poem she raises the question “[w]hat imagery will ever compare to love/ [t]o
its unbridled meaning in time.” In his rendition of the topic “Imagery” - my
favourite poem of this collection – BU illustrates the transient nature of
human emotions. Knowing that we still insist on freezing life in snapshots and
portraits in our futile effort to freeze time and transience for a moment in
our desire to create memories.
In NDB’s “Adolescence,”
an older woman tries to recapture her lost youth by awakening the sexuality of
a young male. Both find sexual fulfilment in the process. In BU, the boy
stepping into adolescence suddenly experiences a range of new emotions due to
the changes his body is undergoing. In the poem, he is turning to the reader
for reassurance, to make sure that it is not only him who is undergoing that
experience.
“Shadow” by NDB deals
with the phenomena of one’s memories taking on new meanings with the passage of
time. Shadows and darkness stand for ignorance, something to outgrow. In BU’s
version, shadows are benevolent forces free from human negativities. The poetic
persona of this poem encourages the youth in the poem to seek shadows.
According to him, shadows are more benevolent towards him than those who cast
the shadows.
NDB explores the
diasporic experience in “Roots” in which the poetic person feels a profound nostalgia
for his/her roots and a motherland left behind due to the War. All the First
World trappings are not adequate compensations for the feeling of loss
generated by the forced severance of one’s roots says the poet: “Rootless/
Motherless/ Without a land to call mine/ I stare at the far corners of [the]
River Thames.” While both poets consider roots and the memories they are
nourished from as important, BU’s “Roots” is a warning to people who emigrate
looking for greener pastures and forget their roots. BU takes the image of a
tree with roots that “condemn themselves to the underworld”. By undergoing that
hardship they allow the rest of the tree to “behold/ Kaleidoscopic visions of
this world.” The moment one forgets his or her roots, s/he will not be able to
stand on his or her “feet/ and breathe life.” In that sense BU’s “Roots” is a
general warning to the rootless modern man who denounces his roots as primitive
and dark and reaches blindly for what he considers to be the light and freedom
offered by the sky.
Once again, in “City”,
NDB reminisces a personal memory evoked by a familiar sight. Following a
familiar trend BU sees the disparity between the lives of the rich and the poor
in the stillness offered by night in the city.
In “Disquiet” NDB’s poetic
persona’s “the naked soul” in its “finest form” finds peace in quietness. In
contrast, the single drop of water in BU is disquiet and yearns to merge with
the ocean - to be part of something greater.
The way the two poets
look at the title “Dementia” too is profoundly different. BU’s “Dementia”
considers a man’s effort to create one’s “own small world” with great effort.
However, the poetic persona understands that only a few enjoy the fruits of
their efforts. Almost as soon as they reach their goals, their world “gradually
fade […] and disappear […]/ First from vision/Then from memory,” he says. The
poem warns those engaged in a never-ending rat race to realize their
unrealistic socioeconomic aspirations more often than not foisted upon them by
the capitalistic worldview. In contrast, the poetic persona sees dementia as an
antidote for painful memories.
In “Gratitude”, BU
expresses his deep appreciation for the marvel that is the human body, which
according to him, mankind has done nothing to earn. When the moment for parting
arrives, the former lovers walk away from each other without any gratitude in
NDB.
Following the same theme,
in “Road I”, NDB deals with parting, loss, nostalgia and loneliness; however,
she makes up her mind to “go solo in this life”. The adventurous poetic persona
of “Road I” in NDM has changed profoundly by the time “Road II” comes around.
As a result of reaching a significant milestone in her life, she takes stock of
her life and decides to be more conforming. In “Road III,” the poetic persona
turns a full circle and wonders whether she will meet her beloved in another
life.
BU, in contrast, deals in
“Road I” with a pressing modern problem both the West and the East are
experiencing – the depopulation of villages. So he wishes roads would generate
traffic going both ways: “May they reach both cities as well as villages/ That
would be much better.” The vision of the road in “Road I” in BU has become an
actuality in “Road II”. In the poem, a man carrying a heavy load wonders where the
others who had used the road got to. Then the man sets the heavy burden he had
been carrying down. The relief he feels gives him an entirely different
perspective of what he is seeing. In “Road III”, BU’s poetic persona questions
human agency over one’s choices or fate explored in the first two poems. He
questions whether he, “[a]ll these years … been walking” the road of life has
been “walked upon” by feet of time.
In “Rose,” the poetic
persona, a woman in an abusive relationship, terminates it by leaving not only
her abusive husband but also the memories she has made with him – a clear
expression of female agency. The poetic persona in BU’s “Rose,” on the other
hand, understands that a person has both the good and the bad in him. He
declares that he will morph into a rose the day he achieves his goals in life.
The female poetic
persona, a woman in a soon-to-be-occupied territory, is forced to erase her
ethno-cultural identity in “Sindoor”. Interestingly, almost all the poems in
which NDB deals with the public, they are to do with the War. In this the Tamil
woman is portrayed as the ultimate victim of the War – a moment of what,
Liyanage Amarakirthi in his “Sinhala Poetry as a Cultural Self-Criticism” calls
a moment of “cultural self-criticism”. Bhisma in his interpretation of
“Sindoor” says that like everything else sindoor too is a signifier and what is
signified by it depends on the socioeconomics of the spatiotemporal location it
operates.
In “Jasmine”, NDB’s
poetic persona traces the War to the insurgencies of 1981, a popular myth
propagated by the diaspora and the LTTE supporters to the point that it has
become common sense here and abroad. A similar ideology is now being propagated
by the Israelis nowadays in tracing the start of hostilities between the
Zionists in Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to the 7th of
October in 2023. In BU’s version, the act of naming is explored. The naming of
a flower as well as a person is arbitrary. However, both share a common fate:
they delight the senses in their youth and then fade away and die leaving only
a memory of the fragrance.
NDB revisits the theme of
loneliness tortured by “bygone memories” in “Silence,” too. Ultimately, the
poetic persona decides to “leave from this world of reality/ [i]n to a world
made of memories.” BU’s take on “Silence” is philosophical. He explores Roland
Barthes’s idea that the meaning of a text is not determined by the author’s
intention, but rather by the reader’s interpretation. “Sound,” BU says, “After
it comes out of one/ Indeed belongs to the other.” According to him “whatever
is truly one’s own is/ [s]ilence!”
The loss of her beloved
brings on writer's block for the poetic persona in NDB’s “Writer’s Block” while
the poetic persona in BU is grappling with understanding the reason for his own
writer’s block. Ultimately he discovers that the pressure to produce – “[t]he
editor’s deadline” – the writers undergo may be the reason for his problem.
The sky is an often
revisited image in this collection by both poets. In the two poems titled
“Sky”, NDB sees the sky as a painting in progress executed by a child god. BU’s
poetic persona sees the sky as a result of the roof being blown away. Hence, it
has negative connotations. However, what results from that negative occurrence
is something positive.
Bhisma sees “Lockdown” as
something positive. It brings human activities to a standstill, giving a
much-needed breathing space to nature. In contrast, the poetic persona in NDB
loses touch with someone – possibly a younger sister or a brother – due to the
lockdown and upon meeting at the end of the lockdown, they find that they have
grown apart.
“Death,” the aptly-named
final topic of the collection, NDB explores the impact of war on human life.
According to her, war is a bid by the powerful to maintain power. The poem
deals with how young are forced to make the ultimate sacrifice and its impact
on their loved ones. The poetic person of BU’s version displays a deep
consciousness of the ever-present nature of death in human life which teaches
people to appreciate the “pleasures of life/ [l]ove/ [a]nd the secrets of
creation.” To him, death is a “true friend” who keeps him from sinning and
teaches him of his destination and duties. The poem ends with a paradox: “Death!/
It’s because of you that I am alive.”
In conclusion, A World Made of Memories is a rare collaborative effort by two poets with vastly different ideas on what life, love and poetry are. However, both have found common ground in memory. Both poets see memory as a life-shaping/altering force that we are in love with and hate with almost equal passion. Nisansala Dharmasena Bertholameuze deals mainly with personal memories of her poetic persona which shape his/her course in life. Bhisma Upreti lets his readers see the operations of memory mainly in the public sphere. Taken together, the poetry of the two writers complement each other’s creations and offer the readers a more nuanced experience for each topic in the collection.
By Anupama Godakanda
